


Happiness

by JuniorWoofles



Series: Destiel Dump Box [24]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode: s15e18 Despair, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Introspection, M/M, POV Second Person, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, is anyone okay after that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:29:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27434332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuniorWoofles/pseuds/JuniorWoofles
Summary: What was the price of happiness? What was the price you would be willing to pay? To feel it?A canon compliant introspection of one angel's views on happiness, from the start until the end
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Destiel Dump Box [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/442699
Comments: 8
Kudos: 34





	Happiness

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a couple of years since I've written anything for these two, and even longer since I've posted anything. But I recorded this after watching the episode last night and finished it up this morning now I've stop crying as much. Watching 17 episodes in a day so I didn't get anything spoiled for me was a lot and I think it broke me. 
> 
> This turned out longer than I thought it would be but I just needed to write something. I know everyone and their mother is writing a variation of this fic, but what's one more at this point? Unbeta'd so all mistakes are my own.

What was the price of happiness? What was the price you would be willing to pay? To feel it? To be able to hold it, even for one flickering moment? Happiness was like a candle, a fire that burned so bright and yet still you wanted to be able to touch it, to cradle it even. You wanted to share it with someone, to know that someone could take the pain of it away and leave you with that shining joy. At what cost could happiness come? At what cost would you be willing to risk everything to save that candle from ever extinguishing? 

A long time ago, happiness had been rebelling. It had been putting your trust in a human. But not just any human. Putting your trust in the man you had raised from Perdition, in hoping that he knew what he was doing. That he had a plan. It was finding out that there was more than blindly following orders. That you didn’t have to look down on them. They were meant to be better than you, no matter what your superiors sneered at you, and looking at them, those shining souls, you couldn’t understand how they couldn’t see it. Happiness had been the word you gave to that soul, the one you saved, before you even understood what it meant. Before you even realised it was saving you. 

Happiness was understanding what it meant to be human. What it meant to fight the good fight. Happiness was knowing what free will felt like. To know that even in loss, in not knowing your place in the world when it had once been so concrete and sure, to know that even when everything else was hopeless, they never were. They held onto each other. He held onto you. It was watching him crumble and knowing you could snap him out of it. It was knowing you could do this, together. Even when nothing else was sure or known, you were together and that felt like enough. 

Happiness was the smile on his face when you were reunited. The half second of relief before the anger set back in. It was the faith that you held on to now. When you closed your eyes it was his face you saw; alive, safe, happy. It was what made you turn away from him. It was how you kept going, even when you were scared you were pushing him farther and farther away. You had to do this for him. Happiness was tranquility. In fishing. In the peace it brought others. What those others meant for you. It was thinking of him when you had nothing else left. 

Happiness was not being dead. It was coming back to him. It was dying for him. It was trying for him. It was the brief moment on his face, catching sight of a stranger who didn’t know him at all. It was coming back to him, slowly, shedding the defence that you felt you had to hide behind. You couldn’t keep hiding, couldn’t keep running. You had to step up and fix the things you had broken. It was the only way to restore order. It was the only way to find peace. It was the only way to know happiness. Happiness was a bee, floating around somewhere. Just a happy bee, messing around from flower to flower, doing it’s own thing but its own will, even in the grand scheme of things. Knowing the flowers would always be there. 

Happiness was rebuilding. A new foundation. Understanding what trust was. Understanding how to build it back up again, after it had been shattered more than what you thought could be fixed. Happiness was not losing each other, holding on to each other, fighting to get home, fighting to get each other home. It was feeling like you weren’t worthy of prayers and being proved wrong again. He always proved you wrong. Happiness was being needed, even when you felt like you had to go it alone. It was fighting to come back to him, again and again. 

Happiness would be staying. Not leaving, again. Cast out, again. Cast aside, again. Happiness would be a button popped and a rose picked up and turning to the right person and not walking away from them, yet again. Happiness would be staying, in that car, in the bunker, anywhere with him. Happiness would be staying, fighting for it even as he tells you to leave. It’s holding on to those moments of laughter, that smile when he knows he’s found you. It’s hating it and wanting to be found at the same time. You could spend forever running away from him. You have spent ages running. Being found, being needed, it feels like coming home. You taste happiness, for a moment too fleeting. 

Happiness is not losing him, again. It’s watching the black drain out of his eyes, watching his features relax in a familiar way. It’s the relief when he blinks back at you with fear and hopelessness in his eyes. It hurts to see them there, but the fact that they are there, that he feels again, that he’s more whole again, it’s enough. It’s rebuilding family, in trying not to break it even more. It’s trying and hurting and figuring things out slowly. It’s finding that he still trusts you, somehow, after it all. It’s holding on to that like you’re scared it might be ripped away again. 

It’s turning to him when you’ve got nowhere else to go. Knowing that no matter how bad things get that he’ll always find a way to help you. It’s knowing that somewhere within yourself you know peace is being wherever he is. Happiness would be being with him. It’s not what you chose. Hard decisions always have to be made, even when they hurt. Even when they hurt him. 

Happiness is the guiding voice in your head that keeps you straight. It’s knowing who to save, it’s doing it, and knowing that it is what he would be wanting you to do. You stopped following orders long ago, trying to break free of Heaven’s hold time and again, but following him is something you would do without question. It’s having that voice in the back of your mind, no matter how far you are from him, or how great the divide between you grows. It’s following that spark. 

Happiness is his face when you come back to him. You’d think by now this endless cycle of refusing to let death get between you would have registered in his mind. He was always a little slow on the uptake. It’s knowing that you’re not lost anymore, not in the place of endless nothing. You’re back. You’re home. Back where your home is, where your heart is, where your happiness is. It’s trying not to collapse as it’s torn away yet again. Another deal gone wrong, another death to add to the catalogue. It’s trying to hope that you can get him back, like every time before. It’s holding on to that when everything else seems hopeless. 

Happiness is getting your family back. It’s reuniting and trying so desperately to keep it that way. Ignoring the solutions that mean you lose him and trying to find the glimmer of good in whatever you have left. It’s watching your son with him. The kid you all treat like family. Watching the kid, the way he lights up, the way his face becomes one whole smile when he gets to spend time with him. The way the two of them need each other. A child needs a father, and your child has many. It’s knowing you can leave him and he will be safe, here, with him. Knowing that he’s loved and taken care of, like he’s the missing piece they’ve been needing for years to try and stitch their lives back together. 

Happiness is fighting side by side, hoping that it’s enough. That you can be together, find a way somehow. Happiness is something you’re hiding, something you’re not accepting, something that you can’t feel, that you won’t allow yourself to feel, because you know what it means. You have to push it far away, all of it. The pain; in an alleyway, in a crypt, walking into a lake. In Heaven, in Hell, in Purgatory, in the Empty. You need to think about that, to hold on to that hurt. All those deaths and goodbyes, all those times apologies weren’t enough and pain was all consuming. Think not of green eyes and freckles. Not of comfort and whisky and infectious smiles. Think of sullen eyes and being cast away. Think of things that hurt. It’s how you can hold on to him. To hold on to that happiness that you want. 

Everything catches up eventually. You’re as close to a Winchester as they get and even then you cannot push your feelings aside forever. It’s time. It is long past time. You’re out of options, and you have to say it. You no longer want to hide it. You no longer can. It’s been a decade of sitting with those words at the tip of your tongue, swallowing them back down and pretending that you were okay with the burn. This man that you fell for, that you died for, over and over and over again, the man that will never think that he is worth it, worth any of it, you love that man too much. You love him with a ferocity with hurts more than Hell and burns brighter than Heaven. A star guiding your every move. You raised from Hell and he raised you to be a better person. He showed you how, taking you by the arm and marching you away from orders and into freedom. 

You don’t know what to do anymore. So you do the one thing you should have always done. You stop thinking. You start talking. You open that damn floodgate. Always another gate to be opened, another sacrifice to be made. Like before, years ago, thinking you were doing the right thing by pushing him away so you could save him, so that you wouldn’t hurt him. Like before, the wall seems to come alive and they all come crawling out and take you, once again the same, as he watches. But you make sure that he hears you this time. That he listens and he understands just how special he is. How special he has always been to you. The full extent of what he means to you. 

Happiness is love. 

Happiness is him. 

Happiness is the one thing you wish you had been able to hold. 

Happiness is a goodbye. 

Happiness is a heart broken.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/kudos etc might encourage me to go finish some happier fics I have in my drafts


End file.
